


The Fool's Altar

by BBJ_3



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Haunted House, M/M, Plover estate, magic dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 02:00:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13671939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BBJ_3/pseuds/BBJ_3
Summary: Sometimes - going back means going forward.





	The Fool's Altar

The Plover estate loomed like a tombstone before them. Lights flickered inside, and at the windows, small dead faces shifted between the curtains. Shoving his free hand in his jacket pocket, Martin sighed, letting his breath curl into long white wisps.

"What could possibly make you think my returning here to be a good thing?" he asked though his eyes remained on the house.

"Alice would've...magic's dying and that means this should be easier to...fix," Quentin replied, stumbling his way through the words, trying desperately to avoid saying exactly what he meant or why he'd dragged them both back to England. Alice Quinn wanted to help those poor children, and Martin had lied - had pretended to be her in order to regain a human body, so he had to come along for the ride while his paramour fulfilled some ode to his former love. Exhausting. Still, destroying the last vestiges of Christopher Plover had its appeal. Quentin stepped forward, but Martin remained, leaving their hands to tug between them. The former scowled. "You don't have to come."

Rolling his eyes, Martin sauntered forward, falling into step beside the younger man. He had no desire to point out that at no point had Quentin bothered to release their hands despite his words. Any attention drawn to displays of affection during these Alice outings risked a replay of the Mute Month. Four excruciating weeks wherein Quentin had pointed refused to say a word to Martin. His silence had irked, but he hadn't attempted to exile Martin further, so while Quentin pointedly pretended the other magician wasn't there, Martin had settled in, modifying Quentin's apartment into a home. The blond hadn't had decent food in weeks. Half of the hours spent using Quentin's body had been ensuring he'd gotten at least one good meal. With a body of his own, Martin couldn't eat for him, but let it not be said that Quentin wasn't pragmatic when his hand was forced. Besides, the Mute Month had a functional Quentin. The complete mental shutdown - a frustrating fortnight, had been so much worse. 

"Even with magic dying, this sort of haunting can be nearly impossible to break," Martin warned the younger man, but Quentin simply pressed his lips together and forged onward.

Hours later, as the sun rose, Martin and Quentin left the smoldering ashes of the Plover estate. No more ghost children. If Martin had pocketed a number of documents indicated the Plovers' wrongdoings, nobody would fault him. It was his decision, as Quentin had previously stated, whether he wanted to publicize what had happened. For the moment, he had no intention. Both Plovers were dead. Not a single other human mattered beyond Quentin, so the entire show was a moot point, but he couldn't let the chance slip away completely. Some day - on a particularly bad day - that proof in the right place might just be useful. 

In their hotel room, both men striped, setting aside their ruined clothing. Hanging up his jacket, Martin smiled as the weight of Quentin's gaze traced along his body. He pushed the smile away, turning to face the blond. Naked and smudged with dark streaks of soot, Quentin Coldwater had never looked more beautiful. His eyes glimmered with the adrenaline of a powerful casting. While they'd both ridden this high before, Martin enjoyed the inconsistency of Quentin's self-control in these moments. Quentin wouldn't touch without asking. Mostly, Martin led the way in those manners. However, Quentin's fingers twitched at his sides. Restless. Given a bit of nudging, the man would be a wanton display - hand around his cock and fingers stretching as he bit his tongue bloody refusing to beg Martin to fuck him. The right word and Quentin would cling - desperate and half-weeping as Martin took him apart, whispering emotions he'd deny the next morning. But which one? 

"I'm rather emotionally drained," Martin confessed. Honesty. It had been a while since the two of them had done anything between raw fucking and overly tender love making. Both left Martin half-wrecked and Quentin vacillating between denial and exhausted acceptance. "If you want me, just ask."

As the ball dropped in Quentin's court, the younger bit his lip and shifted his weight from foot to foot. "I don't know what I want."

"You do, and that's the problem."

"If you know, why don't you just..." a flail of hands, palms over his eyes, running through his hair and an exasperated sigh. "Why are you even here? I'm not what you wanted. I'm just the Quentin you ended up with - you preferred #36, didn't you?"

"#27 was rather pleasant."

"Sexually confident Quentin?" the blond half-accused half-joked. 

"Sexually desperate," Martin corrected. Frowning, he opened his arms with a shrug. "I need to know I'm what you want, Quentin. Every time I touch you, I'm left questioning if you even want me." Quentin's brows furrowed, and he puffed himself up ready to argue, but Martin waved his hand. "You can tell me no. You can kick me out whenever you want. I won't hurt anyone. You've completely ruined that part of me. And if that's what you want...please tell me. It would hurt me far more to find out you stayed silent out of fear of me." Plover hung between them like a deadly pendulum. "You have tamed me, Quentin Coldwater. I have no desire to be the Beast." 

When Quentin failed to hold his gaze, Martin sighed and headed into the bathroom. His mind raced as he entered the shower. Even as the warm water cleaned the ash of the setting of his nightmares from his skin, nothing soothed the questions racing around his head. But Quentin didn't come. Steam filled the room, and leaning against the wall beneath the spray, Martin closed his eyes. Jane had succeeded. Her volunteer tomato had made him human - painfully, compassionately human once more. Then a cold breeze brushed across his wet skin. Opening his eyes, Martin leaned back. Quentin stood in the bathroom. His eyes flickered, but he forced them to stay on Martin. The effort alone softened the ache in Martin's chest.

Crossing the room, the blond entered the shower slowly. He didn't speak, but when his hands reached out, pulling Martin to him, words didn't matter. Their lips touched. Martin pushed down the uncertainty still brewing beneath his skin. Quentin didn't have to say it out loud. The kiss - his presence - they mattered to, but...in the depths of Martin's mind - in the aching, raw core of his still mending heart - two words ache:  _pick me._ _Of all those who want to get into your heart_ -  _pick me. Let me in - never cast me out. Not like they did. Not like Fillory did. Pick me. I'm so tired of_ _fighting_.  _Please pick me._

Leaning back, Quentin took hold of the hand on his hip. Panic rushed Martin's pulse, but Quentin tugged him closer, pressing his fingers against the base of a butt plug. Eye widening, Martin's lips parted, and Quentin kissed him once more - practically devouring him. 

Biting Martin's bottom lip, the younger pulled back. His eyes met the older's as Quentin whispered, "I want you." 

Hands shifted, dancing as if to do magic, and wasn't the tenderness of each caress - the fire it brewed in their veins magic? A leg came up, and Martin lifted Quentin, but he did not press the other against the wall as he might've before to steady him. No - he wouldn't blockade Quentin, crowd him into a humid world existing only in the space between them. This time - it was the other's turn. 

"I want you," Quentin repeated his confession. His hands carded through Martin's dark locks. "It hurts so much. I feel like I'm being clawed apart from the inside, and every time I'm happy with you - when you sing, when we dance - I feel like I'm betraying her. Betraying all of them." Kisses softened each blow, but pressing their foreheads together, Quentin shivered. "I loved Fillory, Martin Chatwin, Jane Chatwin, I loved them all since the first book. I wanted to protect Martin, but I hated the Beast. You're both, and I...I don't know what to think. I still love so much of those books, but they've been twisted with..." Quentin shook his head, not giving any power to the terrors of Martin's past. "Reconciling everything isn't simple. You're not the Beast anymore, and you're more than anything I imagined about Martin Chatwin...you're everything I wanted to be. Everything I was afraid I was...and wasn't. I..." Those honey eyes pleaded for help, for Martin to breach the gap, but the other stayed silent. "I want you, and I don't know what that means."

And nothing could stop Martin from crowding Quentin against the wall then. Every inch pressed against each other. Their hands shifted, sending magic throughout the shower. Tossing the plug aside - where it hung in the air for a second before dropping, Martin pressed slowly in as his legs lifted off the ground. The two levitated up as Quentin sank down onto Martin's cock.

They rose in the air. Legs tangled. Hands desperately caressing every bit of flesh that teeth and lips couldn't reach. Rising and falling, Quentin rolled his hips never breaking eye contact with Martin as if looking away would destroy the strange, wondrous moment building between them. In his eyes, a dark emotion ached. A beast soothed only in the pressure building in him, pushing him toward a cresting where something raw and achingly vulnerable would show. Martin dared not look away. His hand jerking Quentin off as the other burrowed in the other's long hair, keeping him close so that if their lips weren't touching they were at least sharing the same breath. This wasn't love - it was something crueler and more animalistic. A bond formed from rage and agony. Two forgotten boys. Wrapped in magic then tossed into the cold - an empathy which Julia might have wanted if she hadn't hidden away with her hedge witches after Reynard's death. 

 _Let all the gods die,_ Martin thought. _This is my altar._

Despite wanting to prolong the sweet heat, Martin came, a half-cried scream breaking the drumming of water across their bodies and the tile below. Quentin followed, cresting and tilting back before falling against Martin. His lips murmured confessions against his lover's skin. Want, need, love, forgiveness, agony, fear blended into an indescribable prayer. A world formed between the two, and as they landed against the warm tile, Martin kept Quentin in a tight embrace, hording the impossibility of Quentin's affection - his almost love. 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I think this is out of my system now. Moving on to plant seeds in other rare pairings.


End file.
